DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO  Mayor Bob Filner has promoted a woman to serve as his top aide while he wrestles with the legal and political fallout from allegations that he sexually harassed women.

Attorney Lee Burdick, who was named Filner’s chief of staff on July 24 two weeks after the scandal broke, sat down with the U-T San Diego last week for a half-hour interview for this profile that ran Sunday.

The questions from U-T reporter Craig Gustafson have been paraphrased and shortened for brevity, but Burdick’s answers are presented in full. The initial part of the interview in which Burdick described her work history and background is not included below.

QUESTION: What made you want to leave the Port Commission and join the Filner administration last December?

BURDICK: “I saw working in this administration as an extraordinary opportunity to move forward some of the most important projects that the city has seen in a long while. I’ll give you a for-instance. While on the Port Commission, I was chair of the port’s environmental advisory committee and I helped found the working group on their climate action plan, talking about global warming and the need to mitigate and adapt to what we know is this phenomenon that is going to affect, particularly, cities on the waterfront. The port has 33 miles of waterfront. The city of San Diego represents about 100 times the level of complexity and the interest that the port does. I found the port work fascinating. I knew I would find city work even more fascinating because of the diversity of issues that’d I’d be working on.”

Q: Given everything that’s happened over the last three weeks, do you still think progress can be made by this administration?

BURDICK: “Absolutely. I think our strategic approach will have to change to get it done, but I think we have a prime opportunity still to continue to advance some of those objectives and some of the mayor’s highest priorities.”

Q: What do you mean the strategic approach has to change?

BURDICK: “This mayor is probably the first strong mayor under the strong mayor form of government. He wasn’t in city government before. He didn’t just transition from an existing city department in the mayor’s role. He came in with all guns blazing. For lack of a better term, pissed off a lot of people. We are not going to be able to move forward his agenda using that same strategy anymore. What we now have to do is focus on bringing forward true win-win-win propositions. Proposals to the council that are so good for the people in their districts, that are so good for the citizens of San Diego, that they literally have no choice but to vote for them. And quite frankly I think there are so many different aspects of the mayor’s agenda with which we can do that, I am confident that we’re going to be able to move forward some very important projects.”